Sometimes, people in separate photographs can be successfully combined.

Couple's portrait, drawn from two separate photographs.

Portraits are nice romantic gifts for Valentine's Day, or just because!

This drawing was done using two separate photographs as artist reference. You can see the reference photos
below the finished pencil portrait. Please scroll all the way down to the end of this page if you would like to read the full
story of the creation of this artwork.

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Here are the two separate photographs I used as portrait drawing reference.

They did not have a photo of the two of them together during their first years of dating, so a pencil portrait drawn
from the photos filled this need.

They are good looking people apart, but even nicer together!

After the client emailed me the reference photos, I did a rough (very rough!) ink sketch of how I envisioned the layout.

When I did the artwork, I had to keep in mind that the lighting in the two photos was different. Highlights
in their eyes were on different sides and the shadows, dark, and light areas were opposites because of this.

I made adjustments...as you can see from the rough sketch, I originally planned to move her eye direction
but ended up moving the direction of both their eyes a little bit, so they would be looking in the same direction.

So this makes the likenesses a bit 'off,' if you are wanting to see perfect photorealism, but I think in
the end it does make the portrait better overall that the subjects look in the same direction as if they were originally together
in the portrait.

I added shadows also that were not in the original reference photos, because for example, her hair would
cast a shadow on his shoulder.

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